In a mobile communication network, generally, a hierarchical management mode is adopted to manage equipment (or network elements) in the entire communication network. Generally, there are different hierarchies of management systems, such as a Network Management System (NMS) and an Element Management System (EMS). The EMS mainly completes a function of an Element Management Layer (EML) in an International Telecommunications Union Telecommunications Management Network (ITU TMN), i.e., completes a management function of one or more pieces of mobile communication equipment (one or more network elements), and generally, the managed network elements are from the same equipment supplier. The NMS mainly completes a function of a Network Management Layer (NML) in the ITU TMN, and is in charge of managing all the network elements in a managed network. An interface between the NMS and the EMS is called a north interface (Itf-N). In general, an operator communicates with the EMS in the NMS through the north interface, thus fulfilling the aim of managing equipment of different manufacturers and relevant functions.
In view of a 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) specification, the north interface processing function on the NMS layer is called IRPManager, and the north interface processing function on the EMS layer is called IRPAgent. When the NMS interacts with the EMS through the north interface, actually, the NMS firstly interacts with the IRPManager, the IRPManager interacts with the IRPAgent through the north interface, and the IRPAgent interacts with the EMS, and vice versa. For the sake of simplicity and convenience, the application is described with the NMS and the EMS; however, in an actual process, as described above, the IRPManager and the IRPAgent may participate in the interaction.
As the application of a mobile communication system becomes more and more popular, the scale of the mobile communication system is larger and larger, and there are more and more areas being covered by the mobile communication network. To make up coverage holes in partial areas and meet the demand for the capacity of hot-spot areas, there are more and more small base stations (small cell nodes) being deployed into the mobile communication network, which results in the dramatic increase in the quantity of the base stations to be managed in the network. However, operators desire to still efficiently manage the network under the condition that the operation and maintenance cost (such as personnel and expenditures) is not increased. Aiming at this situation, a new request is made on the management systems of the mobile communication network, i.e., a management mode for on-demand management is proposed.
The on-demand management here means: equipment in the mobile communication network only submits management information to the management systems when required instead of submitting the information all the time as before. The aim of the on-demand management is to reduce the amount of data submitted through the north interface, so as to alleviate the pressure of the north interface, and also reduce data to be processed by management personal. At the present, the idea of the on-demand management is to classify the base stations or cells according to their importance, and determine whether the base stations or cells should work in an active mode or a passive mode according to the importance. To be specific, the base stations or cells are classified into important and unimportant ones; the important base stations or cells are set to work in the active mode, and the unimportant base stations or cells are set to work in the passive mode. The base stations or cells in the active mode will submit various types of data (performance data, tracking data, alarms, configuration informing messages and the like) in real time according to a traditional way, and the base stations or cells in the passive mode will not submit the data in real time but save the required data, and passively wait for the management systems to acquire the data when the data are needed.
In the relevant technology, a method for judging whether the base stations or cells are important is realized through a static mode (which is planned according to information such as historical data, positions and user situations of the base stations or cells) or a dynamic mode (which is decided dynamically according to dynamic data, such as the performance data, an operating state and a load situation, of the base stations or cells during operation). The base stations or cells are set to work in the active mode as long as they are judged to be important, and are set to work in the passive mode as long as they are judged to be unimportant. Therefore, the method is simpler.
The inventor, in a research process, finds that: when the static mode is adopted, the importance of the base stations or cells is fixed, and cannot be dynamically adjusted according to the operation situations of the base stations or the load situations of the cells, thereby the effect of better reducing interface data cannot be achieved; while when the dynamic mode is adopted, although the effect of reducing the amount of data at the interface is improved, the important base stations or cells may be set to work in the passive mode, thus causing a complaint on the quality of service.
At present, an effective solution aiming at the problem resulted by the adoption of either the dynamic mode or the static mode in the relevant technology when determining the working mode of the base stations or cells has not been provided yet.